Power Consumption and Final Thoughts
Our power consumption results actually put the Galaxy 9600 GT LP and the Radeon HD 4670 in a dead heat – both have low idle power draw and pull about the same under full load as well. Keeping in mind that both of these cards are sans-PCIe-power connection on the card itself, these are reasonable numbers. Though with the better performance of the 9600 GT offering, it’s hard to see anyone picking the Radeon option instead.
Performance
I think our assortment of benchmarks clearly showed that the Galaxy 9600 GT LP was the better of the two graphics cards tested today in terms of raw gaming horsepower. While the Radeon HD 4670 512MB card was able to match performance in a couple of spots, the majority of cases clearly showed the NVIDIA-based hardware with the gaming advantage including in titles like Left 4 Dead and Far Cry 2.
To be fair, it would seem that our testing resolutions of 1600×1200 and 2048×1536 (for all but Crysis) were a little bit much for either of these $80-100 graphics cards. Turning the image quality down a notch would definitely help the overall playability of these solutions and I think in reality gamers looking at cards of this price point will be doing that anyway.
Pricing and Availability
One of the big keys for Galaxy is that this card is available today in retail stores like Best Buy across the US – exactly the right place to find upgrade options for big-box PC buyers.
Of course, many of our readers will be used to (and expecting) the lower prices of e-tail, and you can find the Galaxy 9600 GT LP on our pricing engine or at Newegg.com for about $85 after a mail-in rebate. This price is a bit higher than that of your standard sized 9600 GT cards – they can be found for as low as $70 for some models – but what you are paying for with this card is the extra work put into creating a low-profile and low-power design.
Final Thoughts
The Galaxy 9600 GT LP is not the fastest or the cheapest 9600 GT offering available but its ability to upgrade existing PCs with high-class gaming performance will certainly make it a popular choice. By shrinking the PCB down and removing the requirement for a PCI Express power connection Galaxy has created a card that will work in nearly every big-box PC on the market, even the smallest ones. If you or someone you know is in need of a gaming upgrade and has these restrictions, one of these Galaxy cards will definitely do the trick!
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